he’d outgrown it.
I lay listening to him, sleep drifting back over me as he climbed into his bed. Then breaking through, not enough to wake me, but at the very edge of my awareness, another sound – Mum was singing him a lullaby.
Spring sunshine painted pillars of white across my carpet.
It was Saturday, which meant breakfast around the table. I put on my dressing gown, but didn’t go downstairs straight away. I wanted to check something first.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been in his room.
Dad hadn’t wanted me to feel afraid or weird about anything, so after I got back from staying with Nanny Noo, we went in together. We shuffled around awkwardly and Dad said something about how he knew Simon wouldn’t mind if I played with his toys.
People always think they know what dead people would and wouldn’t mind, and it’s always the same as what they would and wouldn’t mind – like this time at school when a really naughty boy, Ashley Stone, died of Meningitis. We had this special assembly for him which even his mum attended, where Mr Rogers talked about how spirited and playful Ashley was, and how we’d always remember him with love. Then he said he was certain Ashley would want us to try and be brave, and to work hard. But I don’t think Ashley would have wanted that at all, and maybe that’s because I didn’t want it. So you see what I mean? But I suppose Dad was right. Simon wouldn’t mind if I played with his toys because he never minded. I didn’t play with them though, and the reason is the obvious one. I felt too guilty. Some things in life are exactly as we imagine.
His model aeroplanes swung gently on their strings, and the radiator creaked and groaned. I stood beside his bed lifting the comfort blanket from his pillow. ‘Hey Si,’ I whispered. ‘Happy birthday.’ Then I placed the blanket back in his keepsake box, and closed the lid.
I guess children believe whatever they want to believe.
Perhaps adults do too.
In the kitchen Dad was making a start on breakfast, prodding bacon around a sizzling pan. ‘Morning, mon ami.’
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘Bacon sandwich?’
‘Where’s Mum?’
‘She didn’t sleep well, sunshine. Bacon sandwich?’
‘I want marmalade, I think.’ I opened the cupboard, pulled out a jar and struggled with the lid before handing it to Dad.
‘You must have loosened it for me, eh?’
He lifted a rasher, considered it, and dropped it back in the pan. ‘Are you sure you don’t want bacon? I’m having bacon.’
‘We go to the doctor’s a lot, Dad.’
‘Ouch. Shit!’
He glared at the reddened flesh on his knuckle, as though expecting it to say sorry.
‘Did you burn yourself, Daddy?’
‘It’s not so bad.’ Stepping to the sink, he turned on the cold tap and made a comment about how untidy the garden looked. I scooped out four large spoonfuls of marmalade, emptying it. ‘Can I keep this?’
‘The jar? What for?’
‘Will you keep your voices down?’ The door swung open hard, banging against the table. ‘I need some bloody sleep. Please let me sleep today.’
She didn’t say it in an angry way, more like pleading. She closed the door again, slowly this time, and as I listened to her footsteps climbing the stairs, I felt a horrible emptiness in my tummy – the kind that breakfast can’t fill.
‘It’s okay sunshine,’ Dad said, forcing a smile, ‘You didn’t do anything. Today’s a bit difficult. How about you finish up your breakfast and I’ll go talk to her, eh?’
He said that like it was a question, but it wasn’t. What he meant was that I had no choice but to stay put, whilst he followed her upstairs. But I didn’t want to sit by myself at the table again, or listen to another muffled argument throbbing through the walls. Besides, I had something to do. I picked up the marmalade jar and stepped out of the back door into our garden.
These are the memories that crawl under my skin. Simon had wanted an Ant Farm, and dead people still have birthdays.
Crouching beside the tool shed with mud between my toes, I lifted large flat stones like Granddad had taught me. But it was too early in the year, so even under the bigger slabs I could only find earthworms and beetles. I looked deeper, digging a hole with my fingers – as the first drops of rain hit my dressing gown, I was somewhere else: It’s dark, night-time, the air tastes of salt, and Simon is beside me, wiping rain from his cheeks and bleating that he doesn’t like it any more, that he doesn’t like it and wants to go back. I keep digging, telling him to stop being a baby, to hold the torch still, and he holds it with trembling hands, until her button eyes glisten in the beam.
‘Matthew, sweetheart!’ Mum was standing at her bedroom window calling out, ‘It’s pouring down!’
As I opened the back door, the front door slammed shut.
I ran upstairs.
‘Sweetheart, what are we going to do with you?’ She took my wet dressing gown, wrapping me in a towel.
‘Where did Dad go?’
‘He’s gone for a walk.’
‘It’s raining.’
‘I doubt he’ll be long.’
‘I wanted us all to have breakfast together.’
‘I’m so tired, Matthew.’
We sat beside each other on the bed, watching the rain against the window.
Only fifteen minutes today, then puncture time. I have a few compliance problems with tablets, the answer – a long, sharp needle.
Every other week, alternate sides.
I’d rather not think about it now. It’s best not to think until the injection is actually going in.
I want to tell a story. When Click-Click-Wink Steve first got me started on the computer, he said I could use the printer as well. ‘To share your writing with us, Matt. Or take it home to keep safe.’
Except the other day the printer didn’t work. I’d been thinking about the time Mum took me to see Dr Marlow, but we saw a different GP instead. I couldn’t remember the details, like what exactly my mum thought was wrong with me, or why Dr Marlow wasn’t there. So I made something up about the mole beside my nipple, and Dr Marlow being on holiday. Perhaps that was even true, it’s not important. The important part was this new doctor asked to speak with Mum in private, and their conversation was the beginning of a whole new chapter in our lives. But when I tried to print this, an error message flashed up and no paper came out.
So that was that.
Until this morning at Art Group – where whispery Jeanette gives out bottles of poster paint, glue, knackered old felt tips and tissue paper, and we are supposed to express ourselves. I sat beside Patricia, who must be sixty years old, or maybe even older, but wears a long blonde wig and pretends to be twenty. She wears dark sunglasses, bright pink lipstick, and today she’s wearing her bright pink catsuit too. She usually draws colourful patterns in crayon, which Jeanette says are beautiful. But this morning she was doing something else, quietly absorbed, making precise cuts into sheets of paper with a pair of blunt scissors, then carefully arranging the cut-out pieces onto a square of cardboard.